Smart Security and the End of War

We humans have arrived at a defining moment. We must bring ourselves into balance with one another and Earth or suffer the consequences of social and environmental collapse. It creates a unique opportunity for bold action to end war as an instrument of foreign policy, dismantle the military establishment, and create a world that works for all.

David wrote this article in response toA Just Foreign Policy, the summer 2008 issue of YES!.

The End of Excess

Cheap oil
provided an energy subsidy that defined the wars, economies,
settlements, values, and lifestyles of the 20th century. The result was
a century of wasteful extravagance and inefficiency that encouraged us
to squander virtually all Earth’s resources—including water, land,
forests, fisheries, soils, minerals, and natural waste recycling
capacity. We are now waking up to the morning-after consequences of a
brief but raucous party. These include depleted natural systems,
unsustainable economies, an obsolete physical infrastructure, and a
six-fold increase in the human population dependent on the diminished
resources of a finite planet.

Cheap oil also fueled a zero sum global competition
for access to resources—particularly cheap oil—and for the military
superiority required to secure that access. The United States combined
the global projection of military power with the global projection of
economic and cultural power to achieve unchallenged global dominance as
the sole reigning superpower.

Cheap oil is no more and the global projection of
military and economic power it made possible is no longer viable. In
May 2008 the price of oil hit a new high of $135 a barrel in contrast
to the historic inflation adjusted price of $27.00. We are only
beginning to awake as a nation to the reality that our reign as a
global superpower is coming to an abrupt end. (See the summer 2008 issue
of YES! Magazine.) If we hold to business as usual, we will exhaust
what remains of our power and credibility in a bloody and violent no
win-competition to consume the last tree, fish, drop of oil, drink of
potable water, and breath of clean air—sealing our own fate as well as
that of our species.

A Defining Challenge

According to the scientific
consensus, to avoid driving Earth’s system of climate regulation into
irrevocable collapse we humans must achieve at least an 80 percent
reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions no later than 2050 and
possibly sooner. Less noted is the corresponding imperative that to
avoid irrevocable social collapse, we must simultaneously achieve an
equitable allocation of allowable emissions to meet the essential needs
of every person on the planet. This presents a particular
challenge for the United States. As the world’s leading producer of
green house gases, our emissions reduction must be closer to 90 percent.

There is no place in this equation for war or the
global projection of military power. Beyond the fact that military
planes, ships, and vehicles are gluttonous consumers of oil, the
central activity of warfare is to kill and maim people and destroy
critical infrastructure to impair capacity for normal life. The
collateral damage includes massive scale toxic and radioactive
environmental contamination that renders growing portions of our
crowded planet uninhabitable. The more we humans war the more certain
our ultimate collective demise.

The Last Superpower

The
United States is well positioned to take the lead among nations in
renouncing war as an instrument of national policy and dismantling the
means of conducting war. We account for roughly half of world military expenditures
and our military expenditures account for more than half of the U.S.
federal discretionary budget to the neglect of major education, health,
infrastructure, and environmental needs.

Yet the only military threat to our domestic
security is from a handful of terrorists armed with box cutters and a
willingness to die for their cause. We face a greater danger from our
own children brandishing guns in our schools than from any opposing
army. If a band of terrorists were to attack us with an atomic weapon,
it would likely be delivered in a suitcase or packing crate. Such
threats share in common the simple fact that even the mightiest
military force in the world offers no protection. The solutions depend
more on strengthening our families and communities, than on increasing
military budgets.

Military science has long recognized that the use
of conventional military force against an unconventional enemy that
blends in with the civilian population is futile, even
counterproductive, because the inevitable collateral damage fuels
resentment and increases the numbers and commitment of the enemy. In
the case of the United States, it drains our resources, divides us as a
nation, weakens our moral standing in the world, and creates more
unconventional enemies—as our fruitless occupation of Iraq and
Afghanistan currently demonstrates.

Getting Smart

The
greatest threats to U.S. security come from weather chaos, oil
dependence, disruption of food supplies, water scarcity, domestic gun
violence, profligate borrowing, and a collapsing dollar—threats
increased by our current military security policies.

This is the moment for a pragmatic turn from
military security to smart security. Among the potential starting
points, two stand out as particularly promising. The first is a call by
establishment insiders like George Shultz, who was U.S. Secretary of
State under Ronald Reagan, to dismantle all the world’s nuclear weapons
(see Sarah van Gelder's interview with George Shultz).

The second is an emergent social movement calling
all the world’s parliaments to adopt the principles of Article 9 added
to the Japanese Constitution following World War II. In the official
translation it reads:

ARTICLE 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international
peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce
war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force
as means of settling international disputes.(2) In order to accomplish
the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well
as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of
belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

Italy and Germany adopted similar, but less
stringent, provisions following World War II. Each renounced war as a
sovereign right.

A Global Movement

In
May 1999, 6000 global citizens gathered in The Hague for what at that
time was the largest peace conference in history and issued The Hague
Appeal for Peace. Among other measures, they recommended, “every
Parliament should adopt a resolution prohibiting their government from
going to war, like the Japanese article number nine.” On Japanese
Constitution day, May 3, 2008, over 8,000 Japanese gathered in Tokyo
for the Global Article Nine Conference to Abolish War
where numerous international speakers endorsed a call to the
parliaments of the world to adopt national equivalents of Article 9 of
the Japanese constitution.

A Smart Security Policy for the United States

The
experience of the U.S. occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrates
the folly of responding to terrorism with conventional military force
and affirms the validity of Article 9. Public awareness of the costly
failure of these misadventures has created a moment of opportunity for
the U.S. peace movement to build popular political support for a Smart
Security policy that renounces war as an instrument of foreign policy
and sets forth a plan to:

Dismantle the obsolete machinery of war that is depleting our national treasure,

Convert our war economy of the past to a green economy of the future,

Mobilize our human and materials resources to address the real threats to our security, and

Work with the other nations of the world to do the same.

It is an opportunity to at once increase our
security, improve the quality of our lives, and regain a position of
principled global leadership.

David Korten wrote this article in response to A Just Foreign Policy,
the Summer 2008 issue of YES! Magazine. David Korten is co-founder and
board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES!
Magazine. His books include The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth
Community, the international best-seller When Corporations Rule the
World, and The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism. He served
during the Vietnam War as a captain in the U.S. Air Force with
assignments in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Advanced
Research Projects Agency, Air Force Headquarters Command, and as an
instructor at the Special Air Warfare School. He is a member of
Veterans for Peace. www.DavidKorten.org

Smart Security is a term originally coined by Physicians for Social Responsibility
after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the United States in a
call for “A Sensible, Multilateral, American Response to Terrorism.”